What happened on the crocodile day

This morning Priscilla set out with a motto: Toronto or bust! Luckily, she ended up with Toronto, and is in that fine city now. She had a pleasant and more or less uneventful ride. It sprinkled a little, but her shoes remained dry. The road was hillsome, but nonetheless enjoyable, and enjoy it she did. And after 112 kilometers of pedaling she arrived at Padraic's place, her Warm Showers host this evening. Padraic, hospitable and frank soul that he is, had warned her that his place was a little small. And it is-- a dorm apartment-- but his generosity is very appreciated, and Priscilla's pretty happy to be staying indoors tonight. She might even run into her good buddy James, as he's in Toronto for a few days (albeit bikeless, which is hard to imagine).



In the absence of grandiose events, Priscilla filled me in on random details from the past few days. And here are some of them: she got a flat tire back on the crocodile day ("the crocodile day" being an invention of my niece; it refers to any day prior to yesterday, but no more specific than that-- handy, right?), her only flat so far during the trip. Pretty impressive, huh? It probably helps that she's not riding on Chicago streets, and that her tires are partly made of... crud, I forgot what it's called. I want to say Teflon, but I don't think that's it. Some really amazingly durable stuff that you can have on a tire. Kryptonite? Vegemite? Goretex? No... The three-legged monkey question has been explained, but the explanation is pretty banal. And! Back on the day she went through Gananoque, when it was rainy and sunny and rainy and so on, she spent a fair amount of the afternoon pedaling furiously down the road and singing at the top of her lungs ("All Heavens Declare" and similar) and occasionally looking up at the rain-heavy clouds and saying "Bring it on!" Which is absolutely excellent, don't you think?




Ca y est, elle est arrivee a Toronto! Eh, oui, 112 kilometres ne l'ont pas pu interdire access a cette belle ville (ben, j'imagine-- je ne l'ai jamais vu, moi). Le trajet a ete paisible-- il y avait de la pluie hyper-legere, et ses chaussures sont reste secs. Et puis il y avait pas mal de collines, mais de belles et de facilement montees. Apres une promenade tres sympa, elle est tombee sur la maison de Padraic, un membre de Warm Showers chez lequel elle dort ce soir. Il est tres gentil, et accuiellant malgre la petitesse de sa chambrifime (dont il l'a prevenu, honnete homme qu'il est). C'est possible que Priscilla va voir son ami James ce soir, car il passe actuellement quelques jours a Toronto.



Car il n'y a pas grande chose a raconter d'aujourd'hui, on va raconter ce qui s'est passe le jour du crocodile (ca veut dire n'importe quel jour avant hier, selon ma niece qui l'a invente). Elle a eu une crevaison, mais qu'une seule, ce qui est vraiment impressionante vue toute la route qu'elle a couverte. C'est peut-etre en partie grace au fait qu'elle roule hors les rues de Chicago, et en partie grace au pneus fabuleux, fait avec une matiere extraordinaire dont j'ai completement oublie le nom, et en partie grace a Dieu. D'ailleurs, la question du singe n'etait rien-- il y avait enfin une explication nette mais peu interessante. Et puis, le jour ou elle a passe par Gananoque, elle a chante des cantiques a tue-tete dans la pluie et sous le soleil, lancant des "Vas-y, fait de ton mieux" aux nuages gris et lourds. Ce qui est vraiment excellente, n'est pas?